


Epitaphios Logos

by AirgiodSLV



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/F, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26240593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiodSLV
Summary: “Is this a thing?” asks the giant, sounding curious.“This is absolutely a thing,” the woman answers. “Try never to let Nicolás get killed; every few centuries it gets messy."or;5 times Nicky dies and Joe has something to say about it.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 82
Kudos: 849





	Epitaphios Logos

**Author's Note:**

> For Tabby. Thank you to Linny for beta-reading.
> 
> Warnings: Mentions of historical slavery and child soldiers, violence, and repeated murders. This was originally supposed to be a light comic piece, whoops.

**Genova, 1212**

Hugh is a man of opportunity. When children begin marching from France and Germany to the Mediterranean, expecting the sea to part so they can conquer Jerusalem - and when, predictably, it does not - how could he refuse to offer them passage? What man of opportunity would turn down such a cargo, when there is demand in the markets across the sea?

When an interfering local catches on to what he’s doing, and Hugh catches him attempting to remove the children waiting for passage aboard Hugh’s ship, it is also the act of a man of opportunity to gut him with a knife to keep him quiet. The other man is a fighter, and not so easy to take down, but he carries a longsword, which is nearly impossible to use in a cramped hold surrounded by panicked children. He doesn’t want to harm any of them, Hugh can tell, which makes it easier for Hugh, whose view is that losing one or two is far better than losing them all.

He has no idea where the second man comes from, but he’s suddenly there, and Hugh’s knife is not, struck from his hand by a blow from a scimitar—which, while perhaps still not ideal for a fight in the belly of ship, is still a precise enough tool for the job, given the obvious skill of the man who wields it.

Hugh’s calculation of acceptable losses swings significantly.

The newcomer has a bristling black beard and an expression like a thundercloud, which is all Hugh can really tell when his attention is on the scimitar. Hugh had thought he might be a rival after Hugh’s cargo, but when he speaks, it’s with a righteous fury that immediately puts that notion to rest.

“You are a peddler of children,” the man declares in crisp, unaccented zeneize, which is not what Hugh had been expecting. “You are a perverter of faith, and a destroyer of innocents. Your crimes would make God turn His face away in sorrow. The grief you have brought to a gentle heart should have struck you dead with shame.”

The bearded man - or rather, the scimitar - indicates the messy corpse Hugh still needs to remove from his cargo hold. “For spilling his blood alone, I would have killed you, but for spilling his tears, I will leave your bones to bleach and crack in the sun, gnawed by the teeth of wild dogs.”

There’s a rustle of feet and cloth on the ladder, and they’re joined by two women in foreign garb, who take in the scene with curious but largely unaffected gazes.

“We hoped we would find you here,” the smaller of them declares, apparently not to Hugh. “We’ve been looking for you for a very long time.” There’s a pause, and then she adds, “That was very poetic.”

“This man killed Nicolò,” declares the bearded man. “I will carve his heart from his chest and paint the walls with his blood.”

“Ah,” the other woman declares, looking at the corpse. “I’m sorry. You were always together, in our dreams—we couldn’t tell which of you it was we were meant to see. It’s you, then?”

“It’s both of us,” the man answers, making no sense whatsoever.

The woman with the bow strapped across her chest asks, after a pause, “If it’s both of you, then why…?”

“The outcome does not forgive the intention. Excuse me,” the man says, and then the scimitar flashes, and there is a fire that lights up Hugh’s body before it begins, terribly, to go cold. His last thought is that this is certainly not an acceptable loss, and hadn’t been in his calculations at all.

\+ + +

**Lake Kizi, 1297**

Temulun’s life has become very confusing, and very complicated.

Confusing because he’s been separated from the fighting, and finds himself up against a group of four with none of his allies in sight. None of them are Ainu, or look anything like it. They look nothing like each other, either. Their garments are strange and equally mismatched. Two of them are women.

One of them will be dead soon—which is where the complication arises, because the others have taken great exception to the loss of their comrade. Temulun is accustomed to fear, desperation, and submission in his foes. It’s the way their war is waged, bringing terror before death, spreading stories of the atrocities the Mongols will commit if they are not given surrender. The nations of the world have fallen before them because of it.

The man facing him does not look afraid. He looks murderous.

“Nikola,” the taller of the women says, crouched down beside the man whose insides spill across the ground around him. She says something else, but it’s in a language Temulun doesn’t understand.

“Stay with us,” the other says. She doesn’t look down, set in a wide-legged stance at the man’s feet, a blade in her hand. “It will be harder if you go now. We will only lose you again.”

The woman’s blade sings when she sheathes it, and then she’s unhooking the bow strapped across her chest and stringing it with casual, practiced ease.

The choked, gurgling noises on the ground finally cease. Temulun wonders how far he can get at a run before the woman with the bow shoots him in the back.

“No!” shouts the other man, and puts his body between Temulun and the bow. “I want to kill him. I want to watch the light leave his eyes when his soul departs this world.”

He points the curved blade in his hand toward Temulun. Temulun has killed many, many men who carry such blades. He has destroyed their armies and burned their cities. He has flung corpses carrying the Black Death over their walls, and tortured those who resist conscription.

He chooses not to point this out.

“I have followed you across the world. Your massacres, your plagues, your defilement. I have seen the slaughter and the bodies of the dead, blackened by the sickness you use as a weapon. I have died of it. Worse, I have brought death to those around me. I have been your hand in this work, and you have used me to kill the man I love as surely as you have used your sword.”

“Is this going to be a thing?” asks the woman on the ground.

“They’re young,” answers the archer. “I think it’s sweet. When was the last time you made such a show for me?”

“This morning,” comes the reply. “I killed that scout we captured with the bad teeth when you told me his breath offended you.”

Temulun is only half-paying attention to this, because the man with the scimitar is both closer and angrier, but then he’s distracted entirely by a wheezing, drowning cough as the man he’d killed jerks and shudders anew.

The woman curses. “Not yet, not yet, Nikola.” It is a command, not a plea, but the man dies anyway, drowning in his own blood.

“I will bury you alive in the plague pits,” grinds out the man with the scimitar. “I will feed you to the rats.”

“Or you could just cut his head off,” suggests the archer. “The day is lost. We may as well take another of them from this earth before we go.”

There is another wet gasp, and the man who will not stay dead convulses, eyes wide but no longer vacant. Temulun breaks and turns to run back toward the army.

He doesn’t make it far.

\+ + +

**Tunis, 1535**

Matteo has been left behind by the battle, too afraid to fight or to retreat. He can hear the sound of it all around him, the clash of swords and hiss of bowstrings, the shouts and screams of the dying, and he’s so paralyzed with fear that he can hardly hold onto the crossbow in his hand. He’s small enough to hide, crouching in the shadow of an archway and overlooked.

He hears the men before he sees them, their voices carrying through the narrow alley and cutting through the sounds from farther off.

“The city will fall. We should save everyone we can. We can’t make a difference now, there are too many.”

It’s Arabic, but the accent is muddled, smeared between Tunis and the East. The voice that answers is clearer, more like the language Matteo learned from the traders who came to Genova, and the sailors on the docks. “We were here three centuries ago. I am sick to my soul of fighting the same wars.”

“We saved many then,” answers the first. “We will save some now.”

Then the speaker comes into view, and Matteo is shocked to see skin burnt pink by the sun and a profile that could have been stamped on a Roman coin. He’s wearing the garb of this city, long robes and cloth covering his head.

Matteo must give himself away somehow, by movement or breath, because the man turns and raises his sword in one movement. It’s a longsword, straight and gleaming, and Matteo’s bowels turn to water at the sight of it, but then the man frowns and lowers the blade.

“It’s a child,” he says, and now he’s speaking zeneize. He must be Genoese. Not from the fleet Matteo had sailed across with. A traitor, or a deserter.

The man sheathes his sword, and holds out an open hand. He asks something then, but Matteo hears nothing over the roar in his ears, what he wishes to call bravery but which feels more like panic, instinct alone jerking the crossbow up to fire a bolt into the man’s chest.

His eyes are shocked at first, and then go glassy as he falls. Matteo thinks he’ll be haunted by that look in his dreams for the rest of his life.

He’d forgotten about the second man.

There’s a cry of fury, and a scimitar blade slicing through the air, bright sunlight blinding Matteo, who still stands frozen with his crossbow empty and useless even as a shield. Then the blade goes wide, another scream of rage following the whistle it makes as it cuts past Matteo’s face, close enough that he trembles and nearly falls.

The second man looks like a native of this city, with his black, curling beard and heavy-lidded eyes. He storms away to his fallen companion, who stares sightless at the sky above, Matteo’s bolt piercing his heart. He spits curses Matteo doesn’t know in Arabic, and then pulls the bolt free. It doesn’t want to go; he’s forced to set his knee against the dead man’s chest for leverage to pry it loose. He hurls it to the side, stands, and stalks back to Matteo.

Matteo holds his crossbow over his chest as though it will protect him, while the man’s eyes burn into him. Matteo forgets entirely to pray.

There’s a cough, wet and ragged, and then a voice croaks, “Not this one.”

The man from Tunis has his hands clenched into fists, and he paces like a great wild cat.

“Yusuf,” the voice comes again. “Not this one.”

It’s the dead man from Genova, rolled onto his side in the dirt. The front of his white robe is painted with blood. Matteo stares in horror.

“Of course not this one,” Yusuf spits, glaring at Matteo. “What do you think of me, that I am a monster?”

“I think that you are very angry,” says the man on the ground, and coughs up fresh blood into the dust. “And that your soul is sick of war. As is mine.”

Yusuf snarls. Matteo thinks he might die of fear when Yusuf turns on him and draws his scimitar again. He points the blade at Matteo’s heart.

“You will remember this,” he says, still speaking Matteo’s own language, with the accent of his home. “The light you have tried to extinguish from the world is one of greater kindness and compassion than you can know. This is an act that would stain your soul to the end of your days. You would never be free of its shadow; you would carry it on your heart and it would eat at you like a sickness. This is a second chance, and you will never have another like it. Think of how close you came to killing this man who spoke to you in peace, and remember that it is an act you cannot take back.”

Matteo is still too stricken by terror to make any answer. There seems none to make. Yusuf turns back to his companion and offers his arm to pull the man from the ground. Matteo sees the blood all down his chest, and vomits in the doorway.

“I think he understands,” Matteo hears.

“I am still,” Yusuf answers, grinding his teeth, “very angry.”

“Come,” says the man from Genova. “We will find the fighting again, and someone else can try to kill me, and you can take it out on them.”

\+ + +

**Paris, 1793**

Jean-Paul should have left France months ago. He’d considered himself untouchable, too powerful and well-connected to be brought low, but no one is safe, these days.

The sticking point is that the longer he lingers, the more wealth and power he amasses, as everyone around him is brought to the guillotine. It’s a waiting game, a gamble—how long can he hold out, collecting the belongings and fortunes of those desperate to leave France, without being caught himself by the revolutionaries? French nobility will pay well to leave the continent. They are desperate, and they come to him with jewels and coins, and each time Jean-Paul thinks to take his fortune and leave, himself, he also thinks...perhaps just a little bit longer.

His evening is interrupted in dramatic fashion by pounding at his door. He goes cold with fear, and at first hopes to simply ignore it, but after the pounding goes on and on with no one to answer, the person on the other side chooses expediency and simply kicks the door in.

The man is cloaked. When he throws back his hood, his eyes are a piercing blue. “They have your name,” he says, with no preamble, and it takes a second of terror for Jean-Paul to realize this is a warning. “Take what you need. We can see you to the dock, but you must go now.”

His accent is Romansh, though Jean-Paul would not have guessed he was Swiss. His hand is on the pommel of a sword nearly the length of his legs. Jean-Paul gapes at him until the man repeats urgently, “You must go now,” and then Jean-Paul is scrambling for his papers, his chest of jewels, all of the wealth he has little time to pack.

“Leave it,” the cloaked man tells him. “Take only what you need. There is no time.”

Jean-Paul has waited this long to leave—he will not leave behind all that he stayed for. The jewels alone are a fortune, and he has more, far more. Bank notes and coins and deeds—the wealth of a city, of a nation, in his pockets.

He continues packing, feverishly, and the man who came to warn him paces impatiently before the fire. He stops with his back to Jean-Paul, watching the front door, which is when Jean-Paul truly looks again at the sword.

It’s old. Very old, though he knows little enough of antiques. This is an heirloom, and well-kept—the scabbard catches the firelight and he can see the gleam of fine metal at the hilt. A valuable piece. And if this man carries it so casually, what else might he be carrying, beneath that hooded cloak?

This will be the last chance Jean-Paul has for wealth in France. It is hardly a decision at all.

He had thought the fireplace poker would do the job, but although the man is impaled on the iron spike, he writhes still, twisting onto his back with the poker jutting out between his ribs. His expression is blank and shocked, very much the look of a man surprised to be stabbed in the back by a complete stranger, but the light in his eyes is fading.

Jean-Paul reaches to undo the sword belt and meets unexpected resistance, the man’s hand tightening on the pommel as if to draw it with his last remaining strength. Panicked and deprived of the fireplace poker, Jean-Paul grabs one of the silver candelabra from the mantel - a parting gift from another of the aristocracy, along with all other household goods of value - and beats the man’s head in with it until he finally goes still.

There is a sound behind him, and he whirls around, nearly falling over the body at his feet. Two strangers stand in the open doorway, staring at him. Or rather, one of them stares at him, a woman with a long braid and travel-worn boots, and the other stares at the swordsman on the hearth rug.

Jean-Paul has not decided yet what to say to these new arrivals - the man fell backwards onto the poker, and the candelabrum dropped onto his head? ...many times over? - when the new man draws a sword of his own, long and wickedly curved.

“Help!” Jean-Paul cries, appealing to the woman, although this is a dubious strategy at best. “Robbers!”

The woman does nothing. The man begins to advance on him, and Jean-Paul scrambles backward, hand flung out to catch himself on the mantel as he trips over the corpse. If possible, the man’s expression seems to grow even more furious.

“I have had conflicted feelings about helping the French since the siege of Jerusalem,” the man tells him, striding forward. “You are not helping me to reconcile them.”

“He came to rob me!” Jean-Paul insists, which is a convenient story. “Look, he…” He doesn’t want to draw their attention to the open chest filled with treasure, but he sees little choice at the moment. “He tried to steal all I own!”

“That man would give his last crust of bread to save another. He would give away coin and water and his life’s blood for any in need, and you would call him a thief? He came to warn you, to spare your life, and you have robbed him of his own.”

“I’m with you, Joseph,” the woman agrees. She’s now kneeling beside the corpse, ignoring Jean-Paul’s plight. “I say we leave the French to it and move on.”

“Why would you strike down such a man?” Jean-Paul’s assailant demands. “Out of fear? He raised no hand against you.”

Jean-Paul is not proud of the truth, but he is past invention. “His sword,” he stammers. “He was armed...dangerous! I thought to take his sword.”

“I will give you a sword,” says the man. It is the last thing Jean-Paul hears.

\+ + +

**Camagüey, 1868**

There is a demon standing over Lorenzo.

Technically, the real demon, the devil who has actually returned from the dead, is standing some ways apart, freeing the women Lorenzo had detained in the city camp. Lorenzo had seen the bullet hole in his skull, and had put two others in his chest. There is still blood there, and there are holes torn in the fabric of his shirt, but no wounds.

The demon standing over Lorenzo has eyes that burn hot with anger, and a sword that glows in reflected firelight. He also has two companions, who are ignoring Lorenzo completely and helping the blue-eyed devil to usher everyone out through the open gates while they argue about guns.

“They’re loud, and awkward, and useless up close,” the woman says, eyes narrowed at her companion, a blond giant who dwarfs her and yet also defers to her. Both of them are speaking French.

“They’re effective. You’ve seen it here, when used in combination…”

Lorenzo’s attention is snagged abruptly and entirely by the angry hiss of the swordsman. “I have had enough of slavery, a very long time past. Enough of violation, enough of this…” He gestures to the camp. “This commerce of lives.”

“Josep,” the woman calls. “We need to move.”

“And then to shoot a man without warning or honor, to execute him as if he is yours to judge, and not God’s. You are a vile snake, and should be hurled into a pit of vipers.”

“Is this a thing?” asks the giant, sounding curious.

“This is absolutely a thing,” the woman answers. “Try never to let Nicolás get killed; every few centuries it gets messy. Normally it isn’t an issue, but we’re short on time if they’ve called for reinforcements. Josep! He’s fine!”

“I should pay you back in kind, were the bullets not better spent in the hands of those who rise against you,” the swordsman continues. “May they cast you down into damnation.”

Then the demon appears at his side, glowing white with eyes of pale blue flame and a sword bathed in blood. “I am fine,” the demon says, reassuring. “But I will only remain so if I know you are safe.”

“I have a machete,” offers the giant behind him. “Would you like to strike his head off?”

“I don’t need a machete for that,” answers the swordsman, and swings his scimitar.

\+ + +

**Gulf of Oman, 2020**

While they include Nile in group discussions and decisions, there’s still a lot that happens between the other three in meaningful looks, oblique references with only cities and numbers attached, and rapid-fire discussions that shift halfway through into languages Nile doesn’t think anyone else alive speaks anymore. Most of the time she’s even pretty sure they’re not just speaking one language at a time.

There are days when she gets where Booker was coming from, even if she doesn’t want to.

The decision on who goes first through the door is one of these. It’s something that Nile knows is under discussion, but which seems to happen mainly in silences and cryptic comments, and once in a spectacular sparring match outside of the cabin where they’d holed up for a few weeks, Nicky’s longsword against Andy’s axe.

Nile’s main comfort is that in this particular power struggle, Joe seems to be in the dark as much as she is, or else he’s choosing to stay out of it. It’s Andy and Nicky who circle each other, with words and looks and weapons, and Nile only realizes it’s been settled in Muscat when Andy gives them their instructions for the breach on a job as usual, and Nicky is on point.

The job goes badly - Nicky dead, Andy half-conscious, Joe livid - which is why they’re boarding a ship now, with little intel and a bad feeling about everything. This time Nicky doesn’t even wait for Andy to tell him, just moves to the front of the line.

Joe is right behind him, as always, with Nile and Andy circling around to cut off any evacuation. This particular mission is one in which anyone getting away to tell tales could become as devastating as doing nothing at all.

An alarm goes up before they’re even in position. Nile sees Joe fall under a burst of gunfire, his body tumbling down a ladder into the bowels of the ship, but by then she’s got her own problems, and no attention to spare. She has to trust her squad and do the job she’s here to do.

The minute she can join them, she’s running hard for the others, but it’s already over. The floor is littered with bodies, and there’s blood all over the walls, dripping from the low ceiling. Nicky looks like a Jackson Pollock painting done entirely in red. His sword is stained the same color.

Andy has them sound off after Joe groans back to life, bullets popping from his shoulders when he rolls them, pinging off the metal deck. Everyone else on the ship should be dead, but no one relaxes until they’re over the side onto their own, much smaller boat, Nile and Joe bracketing Andy with Nicky covering their retreat.

When they’re far away, with the early morning sunlight glittering on the water, Andy and Nicky clean off the gore by simply stripping to their underwear and diving into the sea, calling to each other like children at the beach as they splash beside the boat. Joe watches, grinning—until Nicky hauls himself back onto the boat, water streaming off of him, says something in Italian, and wrestles Joe off the side.

Nile’s so busy gawking at them - or rather, the splash where they’ve just hit the water together, swallowing Joe’s shout of protest - that she doesn’t see Andy until there’s a hand on the back of her vest and she’s already halfway overboard.

She feels...well, wet, first off, and heavy, because she’s still fully dressed...but also included, like they’d seen a moment she could have been left out, and made sure that she wasn’t.

When she drags herself back onto the boat, Nicky is already there, his wet hair sticking out in all directions but clean of blood. He has an open shirt draped over his shoulders for protection against the rising sun. She’s wary at first, but he’s watching Andy and Joe, who are exchanging taunts and grappling in an attempt to dunk each other. He doesn’t look like he’s waiting for an opportunity to toss her in again.

After a few seconds of deliberation, she sits down next to him, hitting the desk with a wet splat. He glances at her, a faint smile curling one corner of his mouth, before looking back out over the water.

Nile thinks this is probably a conversation she should ease into diplomatically, but she’s always preferred a blunt approach over dancing around something, so she just goes for it.

“He must love you a lot, huh?”

Nicky glances at her again, this time lingering, but he doesn’t answer. He seems to be waiting for her, expecting more, and she realizes what an obvious statement that must be when you’ve been with someone for more than nine hundred years.

“Before, in Muscat...” she says, and then trails off, not sure whether this is some kind of secret, or something they don’t talk about. She’s still new to this, and the first part of this mission, in Muscat, is the first time she’s seen Nicky die. It’s also the first time she’s seen Joe go quite that level of ballistic.

Nicky’s forehead wrinkles, and then his expression clears all at once, and he huffs quietly. “Ah. Was there a speech?”

“ _Yeah_ there was,” Nile says emphatically, rushing the words in her relief that he knows what she’s talking about and she doesn’t have to spell it out. “Andy acted like it was totally normal, she called it a ‘thing’. So you know?”

Nicky shrugs one shoulder. “We’ve been together a long time,” he answers, which Nile thinks means they don’t keep many secrets.

She doesn’t know how to ask her next question gracefully, either, but she still has a vivid memory of Nicky surrounded by carnage, so she just blurts it out. “Does he know it’s you, too?”

Nicky looks at her sideways, silent for a moment, before answering. “Probably.”

So they don’t talk about it then, Nile guesses. Andy hadn’t seemed surprised in the slightest, but all of the stories Andy had told her after Muscat, ribbing Joe across a campfire, had been about Nicky’s deaths and Joe’s violent revenges.

“Usually they’re dead by the time he comes back,” Nicky continues, when Nile hasn’t said anything in reply. “I don’t hide it from him. He knows all of me. He knew when we first met.”

“So just...no speech, then?” Nile asks. She tucks her knees up toward her chin, her shoes squelching with the movement.

Nicky smiles faintly at her. “I was taught other words, long ago, to say for the dead. I prefer to save my speeches for people who will live to remember them.”

“Does he ever.” Nile feels the boat rock, hears the rush of water as Andy pulls herself out of it, and then she’s shaking out her hair, skin glowing pale gold in the sun. “Just wait until you get hit with one of his guilt-trip morality lectures about helping people, and the right thing to do.”

“They’re good speeches,” Joe agrees, hauling himself over the side behind Andy in a slither of sodden clothing. “Almost as good as mine.”

“I hear I missed one, in Muscat,” Nicky tells him, and Joe shrugs it off.

“Not my best. I’ll tell you later. After I have time to creatively embellish so it sounds more impressive.”

“Hey Nile,” Andy says, pulling Nile’s attention back to her—as though it had ever really been anywhere else. “Want to go for another swim?”

It’s an offer, not a threat. Nile is already pulling her soaked shirt over her head and kicking off her boots before she thinks, _yeah, I do_.

“It was still pretty good,” she hears Joe say before she dives, and Nicky’s soft, amused reply: “I have no doubt.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Epitaphios Logos](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28611132) by [AirgiPodSLV (AirgiodSLV)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiPodSLV), [Flowerparrish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerparrish/pseuds/Flowerparrish), [greedy_dancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greedy_dancer/pseuds/greedy_dancer), [Jet_pods (Jetainia)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jetainia/pseuds/Jet_pods), [semperfiona_podfic (semperfiona)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperfiona/pseuds/semperfiona_podfic), [sisi_rambles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisi_rambles/pseuds/sisi_rambles)




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